


If I Could Go Back

by Achilles1011



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Post Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 16:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3387971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achilles1011/pseuds/Achilles1011
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor's musings on losing Rose and the weight that regret brings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Could Go Back

It's the pain of regret, he thinks, that is the worst part. He often finds his mind wandering, wondering what would have happened if he had just let himself go, let himself love her instead of holding back thinking that the pain would be less. There is nothing that compares to the emptiness of loss that echoes within his hearts. He is haunted by the pain of a thousand imagined days of what could have been, and tens of thousand of imagined words that he will never speak. There are a thousand moments he could have told her he loves her, he could have held her closer this tactile body not bound by the facade of friendship that only barely held together in the final days. His mind plays over the moments when he could have been kissing her, touching her, or making love to her, where could have shown her how precious she is to him, and how much he loves and cherishes her. Now though instead of love and happiness, a year full of warm memories of joy and life there is only the bitter tang of regret on his tongue for words never spoken, in his mind for time lost, and in his future for the knowledge that he can never again have those moments with her.  
  
A coward any day he had said a life time ago.  
  
If only his counterpart could have known, if only that cowardliness could have burned away in the golden flames of regeneration that had enveloped him, that had made him into a man with her name etched into his hearts. Then perhaps a better man would have emerged in his place, one that is worthy of her love, one that could have put to voice those words that he knows need to be spoken aloud.  
  
He had kept telling himself that she had known, that it had been enough, that if he voiced those words aloud then everything would change. He had been afraid to give voice the their relationship, to acknowledged the way their relationship had changed from best friends into something more. He was afraid that it would have changed them and maybe he would lose her because of it.   
  
He has lost her anyway and has lost the chance to know what it is like to love Rose Tyler and to be loved by her in return properly with words, acknowledgements, and labels. He has always been too much of a coward to find out what a life with her could be like and now he never would because he has lost her to a parallel world forever!   
  
All the reasons he had given himself to keep his distance from. The reasons he has been using as justification to keep his distance from her now they all seem so trivial in the face of the pain that he is causing himself and Rose. The only reason he had told her that she would wither and die, but it was only one of he reasons he had told himself. Now though he can see how that one could have been overcome so easily; there are therapies available in her future that would let her live longer, and remain younger for longer. His mind wanders as he suddenly questions if he has ever bothered to run that analysis on her DNA after she became Bad Wolf? No… he never has.  
  
The other reason he had given himself, that keeping his distance would protect his hearts from the pain of getting them broken when she realizes what kind of man he really is and leaves like so many of his other companions have. He can imagine pain worse then this, has experienced it when he used the Moment to burn Gallifrey and all their voices screamed inside his head before it went deathly quiet. Rose makes it better though, made the pain and the silence bearable, and now she’s gone and he wants to go back on his personal time line. He wants to rage at his past self that the pain he imagines is nothing compared to the pain he is enduring now. He wants to scream at the man he had been that the pain of his broken hearts would be so much more bearable without the added pain of moments that are never lived and of actions never taken, of the haunting what-ifs, of the pain memories never created, and of words never spoken aloud but shared between two individuals and three, now shattered, hearts.   
  
He wanted to scream that all the pain they would suffer would have been worth it because at least he would have had memories that are untainted. Memories that he could look back on without wondering if he should have just leaned in and kissed her one of the dozens of times he wanted to, but had pulled back because he was a coward afraid to love the woman whom was the love of this body’s life. The memories he has of her, the ones that he keeps closest to his hearts, and the ones that he treasures the most will always be tainted now.   
  
He wonders if maybe it would just be easier to let himself die, at least then the pain would end. He had been ready to do that when he had drowned the Racnoss, ready to give up and let the water take him, refuse to regenerate because he is scared of the man he could become with so much pain and regret in him right now. Donna had stopped him though, but turned him down when he had invited her to come along.   
  
What kind of man is he without Rose and without her love? This regeneration is defined by his relationship with her and his love for her, by the way she made him better, and by the way she made the universe seem new again. Now all he is is a broken shell of a man, mourning a love that is returned but never spoken aloud before the accursed beach.   
  
He also knows that he is not the kind of man who gives up. He needs to keep going because this world, their universe, it still needs to save it even if it thankless and cruel, and he will do it because she would want him too.  
  
And if by some miracle she ever found her way back to him, or he found a way to get to her then he promised himself there would be no more holding back, there would be no more regrets.   
  
He would finish that sentence, he would tell her those words and then he would kiss her, and show her how much he loved her.   
  
“Rose Tyler, I love you and I always will,” he whispers, for the first time and last time with this voice, his hollow and grief filled words that were spoken with a tenderness that would never be heard by their intended. Those words echo through the cavernous halls and hallowed walls, a plea to gods he doesn’t believe in, and an appeal to a cruel universe that only ever takes from him while demanding so much of him. Those words echo through a ship that has seen so many come and go, and will see many more, but still hold so many secrets even from the Time Lord within her.

 

* * *

Those words would eventually be spoken, after seven years and a year that never was, a woman who walks the Earth, and the most important person in all of creation. After a journey’s end and a heart thats breaks and shatters into dark pieces, a lesson learned once again, and a final act of courage and valour, a reward given freely, and death feared above all. Those words would finally be spoken by different lips on a different body with the same face (but exactly the same man) with the same tender tone that filled those halls so long ago.   
  
“Rose Tyler I love you.”


End file.
